


Adjustments

by LittleMissWolfie



Series: After [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Biracial Lance (Voltron), Bisexual Matt Holt, Established Relationship, F/M, Hawaiian Hunk (Voltron), Hickies, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Making Out, Korean Keith (Voltron), Latino Lance (Voltron), Mild Language, Post-Series, she/her pronouns for pidge, tw: scars, tw: war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-29 21:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7699441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMissWolfie/pseuds/LittleMissWolfie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Or," Katie pipes up, rubbing her eyes, "you can kindly butt out of my love life and let me deal with my idiot."</p><p>Or; Matt wakes up after a war to a little sister that isn't so little anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adjustments

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, everyone! If you're a new reader who miraculously found this in the sparse Lance/Pidge tag, welcome! If you're a returning reader wondering why this is set before Moving Forward, it's because this happens first chronologically.
> 
> This had two different ways it could have gone. When I originally started writing this, on my phone in bed at three in the morning, it began with Shiro and Pidge rescuing Matt and Sam from the prison. For a few reasons that I won't go into here I to go this route instead. It was kinda hard to write, since we see so little of Matt and Sam in the series. Literally all we see of them (and Pidge's mother, who will show up in more fics) is in Pidge's flashbacks. If they seem underdeveloped it's because I'm still trying to get into their heads.
> 
> All the names I made up for the team are just that: made up. If material comes out later that reveals their real names, I won't change what I have here. For any future readers, keep in mind that this was written between the first and second seasons, so I only have the first season to go on.
> 
> Finally, I want to thank everyone who commented on Moving Forward for their kind words. I know I responded to all of them, but I wanted to thank you here, too, so thank you Hi (guest), purple_child, and AlphaofDarkness for your encouragement. I hope I haven't disappointed with this new installment.
> 
> With that, my opening remarks are finished. I hope you enjoy Adjustments!

Matt wakes up, and he doesn’t know where he is. All he knows is he isn’t in the Galra prison. He’s in some kind of pod with greenish-blue glass around him, and when he looks down he’s wearing clean white clothes. His shorts don’t cover below his knees so the angry red scar on his leg is on clear display. He takes in his surroundings, noting the clean white walls and pods similar to the one he’s in. Is this some kind of med room? Is he finally safe?

A door on the far side of the room opens and the most beautiful woman Matt has ever seen walks in. She has flawless dark skin and long, wavy silver hair. She moves with an elegance that can only come from confidence and training, and as she moves closer Matt can see the pink markings under her clear blue eyes. She’s checking all the pods, so Matt thinks she must be in charge.

When she gets to his and notices his consciousness, she smiles and reaches to what he presumes is the side of the pod. A second later, it’s open, and he stumbles out, wincing as his injured leg is forced to take his weight. “Good morning, Matthew,” she says, accent vaguely British, and Matt wonders how she knows his name. “I am Allura, and this is my castle. You’ve been asleep in this med pod for about three of your Earth days now. I’m sure you have questions, but there are a few people here who will be excited to see you.”

Like any other man would, Matt follows Allura out of the room and allows her to guide him through the castle’s halls to  what he can only describe as a lounge. “Take a seat,” she says, and he recognizes it as a thinly veiled order. This is a woman used to getting her way. “I’ll be right back.” Before he has a chance to respond, she’s already left  the room.

She’s only gone a few minutes before she returns, though she looks significantly more annoyed and has a much larger  body in tow. Matt’s vision is still blurry from his prolonged separation from his glasses, so it takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize who she brought with her.

“Hey, Matt,” says Shiro, scarred face soft. “It’s good to see you up.”

Matt tries to launch himself to his feet, but his leg gives way. Shiro rushes forward to catch him, and he notices Shiro’s right arm has been replaced with metal. “Shiro!” he exclaims. He’s happy to see his crewmate, but he has so many  _ questions. _ “What’s going on? Where are we? What happened to your face, your hair, your  _ arm _ ?”

Shiro chuckles uncomfortably and guides Matt back down to the couch. “Look, I know you have questions, but we should wait until your father wakes up first.”

“Dad’s here?”

“Well, yeah. We rescued you at the same time.”

Before Matt can come up with a response to that another door slides open, this time revealing a tall, lanky, tan young man in jeans and a tee shirt who loudly asks, “Whose idea was it to drug Pidge?”

Shiro groans in an exaggerated manner, and Matt recognizes the tone as one that predates any recurring argument. “She hasn’t slept in three days, Lance! Besides, I didn’t drug her! She was sneezing a lot, so I gave her some of that cold medicine Coran told me about.”

The confession makes Allura puff out a breath angrily. Glaring at Shiro, she says, “She’s out for the rest of the night, then. Just as well; Commander Holt won’t be up until at least then, anyway.” She suddenly grabs Shiro’s collar, dragging him towards her with a force that surprises Matt. Shiro’s a big guy, easily over two hundred pounds of pure muscle, but she doesn’t seem to be straining at all. “If you ever do something like this again, I’m putting you in charge of managing the sloth people.”

“Understood,” Shiro says, unfazed.

 

\---

Matt spends the rest of the evening (or what he presumes to be evening) exploring the castle. One of its other inhabitants, a (gorgeous) grumpy man named Keith, follows him part of the way, and he’s sure it’s on order from Allura to make sure his leg is holding up. He’s been given a makeshift cane to use until this “Pidge” wakes up and makes him something better.

(He’s hearing  a lot about Pidge. Nearly everyone he’s encountered has had something to say about her. The big guy everyone calls Hunk looked forlornly at the food he’d made, lamenting “It’s Pidge’s favorite, and it just doesn’t taste the same reheated.” The orange-haired alien man complained about having to take care of “Pidge’s blasted robots” all by himself to keep up with the other rescued prisoners. Two strange rock creatures whose genders he couldn’t decipher claimed, “Oh, but we so wanted to have a discussion with Miss Pidge! She always has so much to say!” Even Shiro had a strange look on his face when he said, “I wish she could have been awake, but she needs her rest. She hardly sleeps enough already.”)

When his eyelids begin to droop, Keith leads him through a few now familiar halls to a hall with several rooms. A display next to the door reads [COMMANDER SAMUEL HOLT / MATTHEW HOLT], so he assumes it’s the room he and his father are to share. All the doors around them have similar markings. [PIDGE GUNDERSON] is right next door with [SHAY / RAX] on their other side, and across the hall are [LANCE RIOS], [HIKIALANI KAHIAU], and [KEITH PARK]. “We salvaged what we could of your cell,” Keith says as the door opens, leading Matt inside. “There wasn’t much, obviously, but we got the picture of you and your sister and your glasses; they’re broken, though, sorry. I’m sure Pidge can wrangle up something else for you.”

Matt’s too tired now, but later he’ll smack himself for not asking how Keith knew about his sister. “Thanks,” he says around a yawn.

“Have a good night. You’ve earned it.” And then Keith is gone, and Matt is asleep as soon as his head hits the heavenly soft pillow.

\---

He awakes to a discussion in the hall outside his room. It’s only barely there, but he’s been trained to wake up when he hears voices. “C’mon, sleepyhead,” says a voice that he recognizes as Lance’s from the night before. The only response he gets is a muffled groan, and he laughs as they trail out of earshot.

He mournfully rolls out of the warm, soft bed and changes into a set of clothes that has been provided for him. They look similar to Garrison-issue clothing, and he wonders where they could have gotten it. He grips his cane, tucks his broken glasses and his and Katie’s picture in his breast pocket, and begins the path to the dining hall for some breakfast.

Matt, unfortunately, does lose himself in the many hallways of the castle, but a helpful robot guides him. It scares him at first, because it looks just like a Galra drone, but the blue highlights calm him. Nothing Galra could ever be this helpful.

The dining hall is loud and lively, reminding Matt of breakfasts back at the Garrison. Everyone he met yesterday is at the table when he arrives, which is probably the reason for the noise. Allura sits at the head of the table, regal even in her pajamas, and Shiro sits to her right and Coran to her left. The two rock people are also on Coran’s side of the table, and as the other side is full Matt presumes he’s supposed to sit by them. On Shiro’s other side is Keith, then Lance, who is playfully poking at the unmoving brown and green lump that can only be the infamous Pidge. Finishing it out is Hunk, who has yet to sit down and is, instead, dishing everyone’s food onto their plates. It doesn’t look like anything Matt’s ever seen before, but since everyone aside from the rock people and Allura and Coran seem to be human, and they’ve survived on Hunk’s food for an indeterminate amount of time, he decides to go ahead and eat.

Allura notices him first, probably because Shiro and Keith are preoccupied with making sure Lance doesn’t bother “Pidge” too much. “Ah, good morning, Matthew.”

Time slows to a stop. “Pidge”  stiffens all over before whipping her head up, and Matt is face to face with the little sister he left behind before the Kerberos mission. Her hair has been cut and now rests at her shoulders, her face has lost the roundness of childhood, and there’s a tiny white scar on her left cheek, but it’s her. It’s  _ Katie. _

The only thing that keeps Matt from vaulting over the table and gathering his baby sister up in his arms and never letting go is this damn leg. She beats it to him, launching out of her seat, clearing the table and all the food on it, and tackling Matt to the floor with a force he didn’t know she had. She’s already rambling in that familiar voice of hers, and it make his heart clench at how  _ normal _ it makes him feel, if only for a minute. “We came for you two as soon as we could, there were so many factors, I’m sorry, we should have come sooner--”

“Katie!” he interrupts, and she lifts her head to look at him. “Katie, it’s fine. I don’t understand everything yet, but I trust you.” He laughs, then, a sound full of self-deprecation. “I should have figured you would save me before I could. Dad was right; you’re meant for great things.”

His words hang heavy in the air, like everyone wants to say something but won’t. Then Hunk says, “Your name’s  _ Katie _ ?” and the tension disappears.

Katie laughs and lifts herself up, hefting Matt onto his feet as well. “Katherine, if you wanna get specific. Don’t call me that, though.” Her face screws up. “It would be weird.” She shoots a look at Allura, who has a smug grin on her face. “Don’t change my nameplate.”

“Katherine Holt sounds a lot nicer than Pidge Gunderson,” Allura teases.

The more feminine of the rock people seems confused. “Miss Pidge, how is it possible for a person to have two names?”

Katie sighs. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell it  _ once, _ when Dad wakes up.”

Matt sends a glare Shiro’s way. “Why didn’t you tell me Katie was here?”

Katie whips around, sending an identical glare in the same direction, and Shiro withers under their combined might. “You didn’t tell Matt I was here? Is that why you drugged me?”

“For the last time,  _ I didn’t drug anyone! _ ”

“Then why’d I have to carry her to breakfast this morning?” Lance shoots.

Keith makes a disgusted noise in Katie’s direction. “You actually let him carry you?”

“Aww!” Lance coos, opening his arms. “Are you jealous? Do you want me to carry you, too?”

“ _ Get away from me! _ ”

(They do eventually get around to eating Hunk’s delicious breakfast, but only after Shiro sits Hunk in between Keith and Lance once they’ve ended their mock chase scene and Coran has green space goo in his orange mustache.)

\---

Matt finds himself back in the lounge. Coran whisked Katie off not long after breakfast, looking as sheepish as someone like Coran could look. “I know you probably want to catch up with Mr. Holt, but I’m afraid you’re needed for maintenance purposes.”

“Maintenance?” Matt had asked.

Katie grinned at him. “Most of the robots in the castle are basically my babies. They don’t like it when other people try to modify or repair them.” And then she was gone, down some new hall he hasn’t explored yet. 

He eventually falls asleep again, despite his valiant efforts to stay awake. When he’s roused from his slumber again it’s lunchtime, and Katie whisks him back to the dining hall for more of Hunk’s delicious food goo.

After lunch, Katie drags him to what he can only describe as her lab. It’s a large circular room, with walls and a floor just as white as the rest of  the castle. Tools and various scraps of metal are scattered around both the floor and a floating workstation and a few robots sat slumped against a wall. It reminds him of the shed in their backyard she used to tinker with her toys when they were kids. “I’m going to make you a cane and try to fix up your glasses,” she says, bouncing on the balls of her feet excitedly. “Not to brag, but I’ve gotten pretty good at building things.”

She gently shoves him into a cushioned chair that feels very new and begins her flurry of work. As she moves, he studies her, and his heart drops a little. She’s grown a bit, he notices. She’s not tall by any means, but she’s not as short as she was. She lost some of her childish modesty as well, dashing to and fro in white shorts and a green cutoff tank top that reveals a stripe of black that he realizes with a start is her bra. Her new boldness also shows off a collection of scars to match the one on her cheek. They’re not plentiful or large, but there are enough to startle him. They lay mostly on the her now muscled legs, which flex in a way that would have made him salivate if she weren’t his sister. She’s wearing a green earpiece, and he realizes that he’s seen the rest of the castle’s inhabitants wearing similar ones, but in different colors. He’s not an idiot; on the contrary, he’s a certified genius. It runs in their family. His mother once joked, “You’re not a Holt unless your I.Q. is higher than our street number.” He realizes his baby sister is part of some bigger plan in motion. He just can’t seem to figure out just how big it is.

He only notices the most staggering change (for him) about half an hour after she drags him into her lab. She bends over to push his glasses up his nose, the neckline of her tank top falls to just above the cup of her bra, and he sees  _ it. _

A fucking hickey.

Brotherly instinct wells up from his toes to his chest and he feels his face heat to a level that can’t be healthy. Katie notices, obviously, and pulls back, a concerned look on her sweet face. “Is something wrong, Matt?”

His big brain, for all its knowledge, can’t find the words to express how utterly wrong the thought of his little sister having a hickey is. Instead, he makes a series of unintelligible noises and gesture to his own chest. Realization dawns on her and she pulls her shirt away from her body and stares. “Shit,” she mutters. Then, “Fuck. Shit. Goddamnit. Son of a  _ bitch _ !” She stomps away from him, not giving him the time to react to her string of expletives, and pushes a button on her earpiece. “You’re dead, you piece of shit!” There’s a pause, presumably the person on the other side replying, and her face goes red. “My brother saw the fucking hickey you left on me, that’s what! Why didn’t you  _ warn _ me? And don’t you  _ dare _ use breakfast as an excuse!”

Breakfast. That means the son of a bitch is still in the castle. It didn’t take Matt long to realize the castle doubles as a space ship, and it would be pretty hard for someone to jump off before breakfast. If she’s talking on the earpiece, it must be another member of the team. Matt rules Shiro out immediately, because he’s  _ way  _ too old for Katie and he trusts his former crewmember with his life. His gaydar was going crazy around Keith, so it’s probably not him, either. It’s probably not Hunk the chef, because he was making eyes at one of the rock people all throughout both of their meals. That leaves Lance.

The lanky bastard was sleeping with his sister. Fuck.

Katie makes an angry noise and whips back around. Her face softens when her eyes land on him, and she kneels next to his chair, putting her head on his knees. For all his anger at Lance, he can’t be mad at the baby sister he just got back. “I’m sorry you had to see it,” she whispers. “He can be a jerk when he wants to be.”

“How long have you been sleeping with him?” Matt asks after a beat, not sure if he wants to hear the answer.

Her face shifts. Confusion. “We’re not sleeping together.” At his disbelieving glance, she whines. “It’s  _ true! _ Your baby sister still has her virtue intact. He wants to wait until I’m eighteen.”

Fuck. “How old is he?”

“He just turned twenty a few weeks ago. My birthday is in a week,” she adds before he can ask.

Four years. He and his father were prisoners of the Galra for  _ four years.  _ He missed four years of Katie growing up, of his mother, of their dog. Gizmo, who helped him and Katie hunt for scrap metal and chased off bullies. Gizmo, who unplugged their lamps if he thought they were up too late studying. Gizmo, who was already old when he and his father left on the Kerberos mission. Gizmo, who might be  _ dead. _

“Four years,” is all he says.

Katie climbs into his lap, like she used to when they were kids. She rests her head on his shoulder and his arms snake around her to hold her in place. “Four years,” she replies, voice thick.

\---

He really needs sleep, apparently, because the next time his eyes open it’s to Shiro’s amused face. Katie’s still asleep in his arms, shoulders rising and falling with each breath she takes, face relaxed. He smiles at the sighs and tucks a stray whisp of hair behind her ear.

“Have you calmed down or should I tell Lance to go ahead and launch himself into space?” Shiro asks, clearly trying to hold back a laugh.

“Let him,” Matt grunts. 

“Your sister wouldn’t like that much.”

“She can find a boy closer to her age that waits for her father and brother’s permission before defiling her,” Matt replies coolly.

“Or,” Katie pipes up, rubbing her eyes, “you can kindly butt out of my love life and let  _ me _ deal with my idiot.”

“Oh, he belongs to you now?” Shiro asks.

“Signed a contract in blood.”

Shiro finally laughs, a loud, booming one. “God, you two are so alike.” Matt doesn’t know who he’s referencing. “But really, something big happened.”

“Big enough to interrupt my nap after you complain about me not getting enough sleep?” Katie fires.

“Your dad woke up.”

They’re out of the chair in seconds, and Katie ends up half-supporting him as they run to the med bay. From behind them, Shiro laughs.

When they get to the med bay, the rest of the castle’s inhabitants are there. Lance quickly ducks away from them as they enter, and Matt makes a mental note to interrogate him later. But for now, his father’s awake, and safe, and he’s wrapping his arms around him and Katie. “Katie,” he gasps, “my beautiful daughter. You saved us.” And they’re all crying, and the team leaves them be.

\---

Once they’re calmed down, Allura guides them all to the lounge. Katie sits herself  firmly between Matt and their father, leaning against their father’s strong shoulder. The rest of them (minus the rock people, who promptly found a couch out of the way of the main conversation) assembled on the couch opposite, with Allura sitting in the middle. “I’m sure you both have several questions, and now that you’re both awake, we will do our best to answer them.”

“Where are we?” their father asks  immediately.

The team looks to Coran, who makes a show of figuring it out. “We’re about twenty minutes from the Milky Way. The ship’s pretty slow without Allura at the helm.”

Their father’s jaw drops, and Matt barely restrains himself from copying. They’re that far away from home? They’ll be lucky to even  _ see _ Earth ever again! Katie notices his concern and says, “Don’t worry. We’re going a lot faster than you think.”

“How did Katie get wrapped up in… whatever this is?” is Matt’s question.

Katie sighs, and the rest of them take it as a signal that she’ll begin the answer. “After you and Shiro got abducted, the Garrison tried to pass it off as an accident due to pilot error. I didn’t buy it; started digging through Garrison files to try and find evidence. Iverson found me and banned me from Garrison property, so I cut off my hair and pretended to be a boy and enlisted.”

“That’s where Pidge Gunderson came from?” Matt asks.

“Yep!” interjects Lance, and he apparently doesn’t catch Matt’s glare as he continues, “She got teamed up with me and Hunk! We’re best buds!” Hunk coughs and goes red. “Turns out Pidge was scanning for alien radio chatter and we just so happened to be hanging around when Shiro crash landed on Earth.”

Keith takes over. “I flunked out of the Garrison a year before, so I ended up tracking what the aliens were after and I found out where Shiro would land. I created a distraction to save him and these doofuses got tangled up.”

“I’m not a doofus!” Lance protests.

“You kind of are,” Hunk says.

“Anyway!” Shiro interrupts. “We went to the source of a strange energy Keith was tracking and found a giant blue lion…”

As the story is woven, Matt and his father grow more and more awed. How could Katie, little Katie, who hid from bullies in broom closets, who demanded Matt play with her hair, who created her own friends out of metal and wires, be one of the saviors of the universe? How could she pilot the left arm of Voltron, who they’d heard so much about while in captivity. “Voltron will save us,” the other prisoners would whisper. “Trust in Voltron.”

“How do you know Voltron will save us?” Matt asked one night, after a severe beating. 

A soft voice answered him. “I have seen Voltron with my own eyes. There are five warriors, each piloting a giant colored lion. When they combine, they form Voltron. They are liberating the planets in Zarkon’s empire. We will be free.”

(He was killed the next day for resisting a guard. Matt held him as he died. His last words were, “Trust in me. Trust in Voltron. We will be free.” He can’t remember what he looked like, just his soft voice.)

When their joint story is finished, Matt feels like he can’t breathe. His sister, his  _ baby sister, _ the person he was supposed to  _ protect _ , got caught up in an intergalactic war because she wanted to find him and their father. She’s had to fight people, had to  _ kill  _ people, because of their abduction. All the scars on her body are his fault.

Katie notices his negativity, obviously. She’s always noticed everything. “Hey,” she says softly, shifting her weight and leaning against him  instead. Their father has gone quiet as he contemplates the information that’s just been unloaded on them. “It’s not your fault. It was fate.”

“You don’t believe in fate,” Matt whispers back.

“I do now,” she asserts, and he follows her eyes to Lance.

She loves him.

Matt left his little sister alone, and she went and fought in a war and fell in love.

Their father speaks up, startling nearly everyone. “When will we reach Earth?”

“Sometime after supper,” Coran answers immediately. “The castle is set to land somewhere in the desert near the Garrison headquarters. Allura needs to negotiate the Voltron Alliance with your head of military.”

Soon their family would be reunited. Until then, Matt has some  adjustments to make, in regards to his not-so-baby sister.

**Author's Note:**

> How'd I do? Like I said at the beginning, writing characters whose personalities may be completely different in canon is difficult. All the names I made up have to do with either their personalities or their lion: for Lance, "Rios" used to denote someone who lived by a river, Hunk's "Hikialani" means "looking at heaven," which references his element of earth, and his surname "Kahiau" means "selfless generosity." Keith's surname "Park," accoring to behindthename.com, means "plain, unadorned, or simple." I know how tricky Asian languages can be, so the meaning may differ. 
> 
> Thank you for reading my story! I know most of you are writers as well, and you know as well as I do how important it is to support each other. I hope you enjoyed, and I hope you'll stick around for future installments!


End file.
